Rules & Guidelines

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1. Be respectful to each other.

Using unnecessarily harsh & confrontational language that you wouldn't use in a friendly conversation with a stranger in a public setting is not allowed. If you can't say it in a constructive and positive way, please keep it to yourself or in a private messages to the other commenter. See Reddiquette for more information.

2. Everyone is welcome.

This is a friendly forum. Telling people they don't belong here is not allowed, regardless of dietary persuasion.

3. Swearing & Profanity

4. Pushing an agenda

If your only contribution to a discussion is to derail it, berate other users, push or encourage a lifestyle or diet without provocation, the moderators may take action.

5. Ethics

Bringing up ethics unprovoked in discussions not related to ethics (e.g. recipes, nutrition advice, and newbie help) is no longer allowed. Your posts will be removed, and repeat offenders may be banned.

6. Cross-Posting

Cross-posting a thread you are participating in from /r/vegetarian to a meta sub (A subreddit that features posts from other subs for the purpose of mocking the sub, thread, or a user/users) is not allowed. Users who violate this policy may be warned or banned. Cross-posts must be non participation links. If you link to another post on reddit, you must format the link as a non participation link. A no participation link has "np" in place of "www", like http://np.reddit.com/r/Vegetarian, instead of http://www.reddit.com/r/Vegetarian.

7. Graphic Images/ Videos

Such as animal slaughter, abuse, cruelty, etc, must be tagged NSFW or they will be removed.

this is interesting in showing that there are both economic and cultural factors that dictate meat consumption. For example, many parts of Africa have a low meat consumption level due to meat being expensive to rear and yet Canada has a lower meat consumption than Australia not, I think, because of economic factors but more because of cultural factors, such as the glorification and fetishisation of meat.

How is the US redder than all of South America? It's damn near impossible to find decent vegetarian food in most of that continent (I know from experience and what I've heard from other travelers), but in the US you're pretty good in any decent-sized city. Any theories?

Good Christ, the US consumes a fuck ton of meat. I wonder if we made watching "Earthings" a required video in public elementary and middle schools we could possibly reduce the national average meat consumption. Why not let our younger crowd know what goes on in commercialized slaughter houses so they can learn and judge for themselves what kind of diet they want. The US could also increase its overall life expectancy if we reduce our meat consumption. I would think insurance companies would be all about increasing life expectancy so they can have customers that live longer and pay them more money. I know Kaiser Permanente encourages their patients to reduce their meat consumption and if possible start a full vegetarian diet.

Here is a map of GDP's for each country. There is a correlation between GDP and meat consumption, but it is far from definitive. The US and Canada have a similar GDP in terms of purchasing power, but Canadians consume less meat.
Edit: changed map from nominal to per capita.